Billy Ronson remembers charging out onto the Astroturf at the Baltimore Arena in 1986 to the thunderous foot stomps and cheers of a sellout crowd.

A native of soccer-crazy England, Ronson made his playing debut that year with the old Baltimore Blast indoor soccer team -- a mainstay of the Baltimore sports scene through the 1980s and early `90s.

But no more.

"When I go to the arena [for soccer games] now, there's just no excitement," he said. "The place is empty."

Baltimore soccer is in distress, even in the face of the ever-increasing number of children playing the sport. The Baltimore Spirit -- the Blast's successor at the Baltimore Arena -- hit rock bottom last year, posting the worst attendance figures in the city's indoor-soccer history.

But if the sport as a profession dies in Baltimore, it won't go quietly. A full cast of colorful characters are committed to turning Baltimore's indoor-soccer fortunes around.

Spirit owner Bill Stealey, a North Carolina software executive who is often referred to as "Wild Bill," announced last month a major sponsorship deal with the Dannon Co., the yogurt maker. Stealey said the "six-figure deal" will allow the team to market itself like never before.

And in an unrelated move that some hope can help rekindle the interest in the sport, former Blast owner and 1st Mariner Bank Chairman Edwin F. Hale Sr. bought a majority interest last month in the Baltimore Bays, a semi-pro indoor team with some of the biggest names in Baltimore soccer, including Ronson and former Loyola College standout Joe Koziol.

Hale has promised a marketing blitz for the team, which plays at Du Burns Arena in East Baltimore.

A new Spirit

For Spirit owner Stealey, who brought the National Professional Soccer League team to Baltimore in 1992 when the Blast's league folded, the Dannon deal could be a last-ditch effort to save the team.

Airplane enthusiast Stealey said he has lost the "equivalent of the cost of four P-51" World War II bombers over the last five years. The Dannon agreement at least gives him a chance to break even, he said.

For an undisclosed amount, the Spirit has agreed to change their red and black logo and uniform colors to Dannon yogurt's familiar blue and gold. The Dannon logo will be featured prominently on the uniform.

The Spirit and Dannon will do a lot of cross promotion. Dannon will promote the Spirit at the grocery store, and the Spirit will push Dannon's products at the games.

"This just changes the dynamics," said Stealey, a co-founder and former head of Hunt Valley-based computer games company MicroProse. "We can make a go of it."

Paul Luchowski, league operations director for the NPSL, said other teams in the league have corporate deals. But the Spirit-Dannon deal is the most lucrative in league history.

Because of the sudden influx of income, the team is able to buy enough time on WCBM-AM radio to broadcast all 40 games on its schedule this winter. Some games will also appear on local television, said Spirit General Manager Drew Forrester, but the details haven't been announced.

"It's a perception thing," said Forrester. "If you have every game on the radio and some games on television, you appear to be a big-time team. It's important."

George Denman, Mid-Atlantic region manager for Dannon, said he's reaching a very targeted and attractive demographic through the Spirit deal. People who like soccer tend to eat healthy, and yogurt fits the bill.

Also, Stealey said he's in negotiations with the city to install eight corporate skyboxes in the arena. "I think it's going to happen, and it should help a lot," he said.

The average attendance at the Spirit's 21 home games last season was 4,929, a far cry from the days when the Blast would sell out almost every game in the 12,000-seat Baltimore arena. The Baltimore team's attendance average is 11th in a 15-team league, well below the 9,000-per-game average of league leader St. Louis.

The mystery

So what happened to indoor soccer in Baltimore?

"It really is a mystery what happened to soccer in Baltimore, why it fell from popularity," said Nick Mangione, general manager of WCBM and a Blast player during the team's glory years.

A look at attendance figures shows a steady decline from about 1986 until the Blast's league folded in 1992. Other cities saw similar declines.

Former Blast owner Hale, who bought that team in 1989 and subsequently became chairman of the league's executive committee, blames it on poor decisions by the league, the players union and over-spending owners.

"The health of the league and its future was always in question and that hurt," said Hale.

But even as the end was approaching, the Blast drew bigger crowds than the Spirit has been in recent years.

The National Professional Soccer League has never been fully embraced by fans in Baltimore and other cities around the country. It is a shadow of the Blast's old Major Indoor Soccer League, which attracted the best players with big salaries and -- at least in the early years -- drew the fans with large marketing campaigns.

That league folded; it spent itself out of existence. Hale said he was losing $30,000 a game by 1992.

Competitors?

When the old major indoor soccer league folded in 1992, Ed Hale swore off sports ownership.

But he said he "loved the game too much to stay away." So he bought a majority interest in the 4-year-old Baltimore Bays indoor soccer team from William B. Wallace Jr., president and chief executive officer of White Marsh-based Action Business Systems Inc. Soccer enthusiast Wallace still owns a Bays outdoor franchise, which plays at University of Maryland Baltimore County.

"I'm certainly not in it for the money," Hale said. "It's just for the love of the game." But Hale plans to use his extensive media contacts and his network of bank branches to market the team.

Does this set up a rivalry with the Spirit?

At first glance, the Spirit and Bays seem to have little in common besides the sport they play.

The Spirit plays in the NPSL, a league with a player pay scale that ranges between $20,000 and $50,000 a year.

Nobody's getting rich, but the players can make a living. Spirit tickets cost from $11 to $16.

The Bays, on the other hand, are part of what amounts to a semi-pro indoor league that's affiliated with the new outdoor Major League Soccer. (An outdoor Bays team is also affiliated with Major League.) Players make about $175 a game. Even the team's coach has a day job -- Coach Kevin Healey is the controller for Hale's 1st Mariner Bank.

"Nobody is in it for the money," said Ronson, himself an executive at Action Business Systems.

Yet there is some tension between the teams.

When Hale announced that he was buying a stake in the Bays, he said he would try to work out a deal to play at least some games in the 12,000-seat Baltimore Arena.

The Bays now play their home games at 700-seat Du Burns Arena in East Baltimore. They've been playing to standing-room only crowds at that venue, according to Hale and Coach Healey. Regular game tickets are now $7.

"We just wanted to use the Baltimore Arena on days when nothing was going on," Hale said. "But the Spirit said no."

Spirit General Manager Drew Forrester said Centre Management, the company that runs the Baltimore Arena for the city, asked him if the Spirit would be willing to waive its exclusive soccer contract with the arena.

"I was never contacted by anyone from the Bays about it," said Forrester, who began his career in soccer as an intern with the Blast 16 years ago. "But I did say no when Centre Management called. A contract is a contract."